I am interested in knowing why '%20' is used as a space in urls, particularly why %20 was used and why we even need it in the first place. As the aforementioned rfc does not include any reference of encoding spaces as +, i guess using %20 is the way to go today. Since it's not mentioned anywhere in.
The % character is encoded as %25. If you look at rfc 3986 appendix a, you will see that space is simply not mentioned anywhere in the grammar for defining a url. Sometimes the spaces get url encoded to the + sign, and some other times to %20.
What is the difference and why should this happen? The common space character is encoded as %20 as you noted yourself. @metabyter i think it is more technically correct to phrase the question as in a url, should i encode the spaces using %20 or + in the query part of a url? because while the example.